A Faith Bigger Than Yourself: Dwayne M’Lean and Emmanuel Hooks

January 6, 2019

Dwayne M’Lean gave up life as a gang member and became a Christian minister after praying to God for mercy while serving time in prison. In this conversation, M’Lean and fellow church member Emmanuel Hooks discuss belonging to something larger than themselves and reflect on their ministry work to help those in need.

This story was produced by David Dault at Sandburg Media, LLC.

This story is a part of the American Pilgrimage Project, a conversation series that invites Americans of diverse backgrounds to sit together and talk to each other one-to-one about the role their religious beliefs play at crucial moments in their lives. The interview was recorded by StoryCorps, a national nonprofit whose mission is to preserve and share humanity’s stories in order to build connections between people and create a more just and compassionate world.

Dwayne M’Lean: So, how does it feel when you actually win a soul? What's the feeling like?

Emmanuel Hooks: It's liberating. It's liberating.

Dwayne M’Lean: Can you expand more on that?

Emmanuel Hooks: It's really cool to be part of something that's bigger than yourself. It's really cool to be part of a legacy that's not only bigger than you, but bigger than your past. And just to be a part of something that you can't put claim on. That you can only say, "God did it." Yeah. I mean, for me, that's like ultimate for me, but what about you, minister?

Dwayne M’Lean: I'm from [inaudible] from Brooklyn, New York, born and raised. I'm a former gang member. And I've been in jail. Did seven years in prison. Been shot four times, stabbed, cut. I've been through all that. My life changed one day when I was locked up for a homicide case. We don't get on our knees and pray to God until a situation happened.

Emmanuel Hooks: Especially guys.

Dwayne M’Lean: And I got on my knees. I'd had no relationship with God though. I got on my knees. I told God, "God, if you get me out this situation, I promise you." And to make a long story short, they found me not guilty of the homicide. They found me guilty of possession of a weapon and I did seven years. And I came home and I've been serving the Lord since then.

Emmanuel Hooks: Well, for me, no matter what I've done to get away from him, no matter how far I've strayed, he's always been like ... whispered in my ear. I've always known, even before I was saved that I had like a connection ... before I knew God. I knew I had some type of connection with somebody or something, I'm saying before I knew God. But I've always been very well grounded or connected with him without even knowing it.

Dwayne M’Lean: What blew my mind was last week we had a sister. She came all the way from Long Island to come to the food pantry. And she said to me, she said, "I heard this ministry is doing so much for the community." She say, "My professor at Long Island University College lost his job and told me that y'all was able to give him a hot meal."

Emmanuel Hooks: Oh wow.

Dwayne M’Lean: "Clothes. And also come to the pantry." So I say to this, you never know. Now this is a college professor. He lost his job. We had some people who were teachers, some people work for the newspaper doing articles and stuff like that. A lot of people lost their jobs. They was in the homeless. But they never expose who they were, not until afterwards. I'm like, "Wow."

And I said this, it should be more people doing what we do. When we put stuff on Facebook, it's not about bragging nothing. It's about to encourage others to do the same thing what we do. It shouldn't be-

Emmanuel Hooks: I agree.

Dwayne M’Lean: ... 1001 churches in Brooklyn and we got all these starving people out here.

Emmanuel Hooks: I think we need to reflect back, a lot of times, and realize that our journey, isn't only our journey. We don't know, just by us being obedient to God's word, and us surrendering to God, then us giving God the glory and the honor and us making him Lord of our lives, how many lives our one decision is going to change? I mean, you talking about ... You went from being the leader of a gang to now a minister. I was never a gang member. I was just bad as heck in school. I fought every day. I mean, I had my crew, but we wasn't no gang members. But I think about like the magnitude that you're a ministry in yourself, man. That's mind boggling to me.